Sunstrike_The next gripping Commander Shaw thriller
Page 21
Yu spoke again. “Now we go. All personnel into the vehicles.” He gave an order in Chinese, and there was much shouting, and the prisoners were herded along the track. With Yu, the rest of us went to the command vehicle and were driven fast away from Nodd’s base, deep into the trees along a climbing hill road. We were high up and had the base in full view below us when Yu halted his mechanised column. He passed the word to his radio operator and the executive signal was transmitted. Almost at once there was a change in the jet-whine above us: one of the planes was climbing. Another change as it went into a dive attack, released its load, and then again climbed steeply. A second later we saw it plain, saw it lurch and stagger as the white light, the heat and the blast took it and flailed it like a mouse shaken by a cat. The pilot was a brave man, the equal of the wartime Japanese kamikaze crews, and in dying he achieved total success. The result was appalling: absolutely everything in the base must have gone up from a spot-on bull’s-eye hit. South China rocked to it and the trees flattened as though from a godalmighty typhoon. Even at our height, we felt the angry surge of heat as Nodd’s plans went for fry-up. Concrete was hurled into the air, one explosion after another lit the area like bright day, the ground continued shaking as though to an earthquake, and when I looked at Felicity I saw tears streaming down her face from what was obviously sheer reaction: no one would cry for Nodd. A moment later Yu passed the order to move out for Yamchow fast. There was a note of urgency, and I knew just why: the heat was increasing too fast for comfort and I guessed that Nodd’s bins of UV concentrate were being released. What was happening inside the wreckage of the base didn’t bear thinking about.
*
Safe in Yamchow I had a word with Fuller-Platt from the British Embassy: it was considered diplomatically more prudent if all of us aliens were taken with full discretion out into the Gulf of Tongking to rejoin the Hampton Roads for Diego Garcia and a flight home from there. Sigg, Fuller-Platt said, was to be sent north to Peking for interrogation and as soon as it was safe to do so the remains of Nodd’s base would be examined carefully, though in my opinion and Yu’s there would be precious little left to examine. Sixteen days later we were given the up-to-date news in London by Max in person. Prodding a cigar at Felicity and me from behind his desk, he said, “Peking reports their investigation: nil.”
“Just nil?”
Max shrugged. “Much powdered concrete, under it corpses. Not enough corpses, from which it’s assumed most of them took dosages of the UV. And that’s about all. All metal seems to have melted and there’s nothing identifiable.”
“And Nodd?”
“We don’t know. He wasn’t among the corpses, but I dare say you’ll agree that heaps of powder are pretty anonymous.”
I thought of Rackstall. “Yes,” I said. “So we assume he’s dead.”
Max said, “Assumptions can be dangerous. He could have got out from under in time, when he heard the Chinese jets coming in. WUSWIPP always gives good back-up support, and he’ll have friends in the Chinese hinterland. I repeat, we don’t know. When we have to say we don’t know —”
“We don’t finally close the file,” I interrupted, having heard it all before.
“Quite,” Max snapped. He blew smoke and went on, “You did well on balance. Pity about Rackstall, but you didn’t break diplomacy.” He gave a sudden chuckle. “What China does inside her borders is her own affair entirely. Things could have been different if the missiles had flown.”
I said, “That’s all due to Yu Yung-kuei, not to me.”
“I know,” Max said with a touch of unpleasantness. He didn’t say much more and he merely snorted when I requested the use of the cottage down in Avebury for the leave that was due to Felicity and me. I took the snort as being acquiescence. Later, when we were driving away from Focal House, I looked out at London and found even its traffic jams peaceful and wonderfully prosaic. I looked up at the Nodd-free sun: it was back to being friendly again. Maybe some of the happy crowds were still a shade apprehensive that nature might turn nasty again, but in a few weeks’ time they would forget, and no one would ever know the truth, which was excellent for their peace of mind. But I thought again about Nodd and our lack of certainty as to what had happened to him, and about the fact that never, ever, Nodd or no Nodd, did we close the file on WUSWIPP …
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